Striking the Balance

Dan O'Brien, Beijing

A lot is written about Millennials, their different habits and purchasing behavior compared with other consumer groups, and their digital savvy.  And as children of the internet generation, Millennials are perhaps targeted through digital outreach more than any other consumer group in an effort to push messaging to them as widely as possible.

The importance of reaching out to niche communities online is not a new or revolutionary idea however, and as marketers we do it with the intent of reaching out to influencers that will create trends or disseminate information in a way that helps us bring our message to a broader audience of our target consumers or other stakeholders.

In China, as ever, things can be a little different.

China’s size offers a unique opportunity though for us to achieve similar effects to mass communications work through outreach to relatively small, niche communities.

Take P1.cn, for example; an invitation-only social network that looks to connect young, trendy people in China with other like-minded individuals. As a percentage of China’s population, the P1.cn community is indeed very small, but still boasts around one million members, despite its exclusivity.

Data on Chinese consumers can often give the impression that while developing very fast, the market here still lags behind the West in many ways. This is true if we look at Chinese consumers as one big group and for some outreach it still makes sense for us to use traditional media, or online message boards rather than pushing clients to develop apps for BlackBerrys, iPhones and HTCs. But if we look at more specific demographics such as the P1.cn audience, we see a very different picture.

Smartphone penetration in China as a whole is estimated at slightly under 10 per cent. Contrast that with 83 per cent of P1.cn’s members and you start to see how different this group is from the “average”. Further, 63 per cent own more than one mobile phone. One in four would spend more than CNY 4,000 (approx USD 600) on a new mobile, and 37 per cent say they place no upper limit on what they would spend on one. And one in ten P1 members claim they spend a staggering CNY 5,000 (that’s USD 700) or more every month on beauty care and beauty products!

Here in the P.R.C. we’re lucky we have niche communities with greater populations than a small country, but elsewhere too it makes sense not to trade off numbers for exclusivity just so that THE key influencer in a certain space will connect with your brand. Today, the key influencer is more often than not just the guy next door, or the girl that served you coffee this morning, or that person you passed by in the street without even noticing.  And there are lots of them; that’s why they’re influential. For most campaigns it will make more sense to find that happy balance between the heavily populated mainstream and the ultra-quirky niche.